Inequality is a number one issue for Western countries like the US, UK Australia and New Zealand. It not the same as the poverty issue. The growth in extreme income and wealth differences has gathered momentum as tax-free gains accumulated at the top end compound asset values, while disadvantage and debt compound negatively at the bottom end. The fortunes of the top and the bottom are inextricably linked. To begin to reverse the growing wealth divide, policy must address the balance sheets of both.

ANZ New Zealand has posted a record net profit after tax of nearly $2 billion. That’s a 12 percent increase on last year’s profit. ANZ is the country’s biggest home and business lender as well as the biggest KiwiSaver provider. New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority review of banking practices is expected shortly.

let us acknowledge that it has been a long harsh winter for far too many children. The Families Package was too slow coming, and for the 140,000+ children below the very lowest 40% poverty line it has been a drop in the bucket. Without a longer-term goal of systemic reform, short term improvements can seem like tinkering and band aids. Or even worse, they may create the illusion the problems are solved.

Blaming WFF for low wages is a bit like pointing to our high rate of suicide and blaming it on the existence of the mental health services. The true cause of low wages is found in casualised hours, precarious employment, automation, globalised labour markets and falling wage share of output due to loss of union power.

The debate about WFF including Matthew Hooton’s extreme view that WFF is communism by stealth is full of sound, fury and little substance. Eric Crampton contributes a more academic approach to support the view that Working for Families is an employer subsidy.

Matthew Hooton (19th July, NZ Herald) trots out the tired old John Key scarecrow of ‘Communism by stealth’ to debunk Working for Families (WFF). Hooton even wants to blame WFF for the nurses’ strike and low productivity.

Better off people can simply save less in other funds if they are forced to contribute more, while the poor just get poorer. On retirement, low income workers may get little advantage from their forced saving as they will need a top-up to get just to the level of NZ Super.

There is an ample supply of housing overall, but it is poorly distributed in terms of size and price. Increasingly large gains in house values are accruing for the already wealthy while the poorest households suffer excessive rents or lose housing access to housing altogether.

Let’s be clear, the family poverty inherited from the last decade of entrenched poor policies, sheer neglect or deliberate attacks on living standards won’t be fixed overnight. We get that. We know the PM has solving child poverty at her core, and her values and integrity are the best thing that has happened to children for a very, very long time. But CPAG is the critical friend and has to say the hard stuff on behalf of children.

When the Fund is included, New Zealand’s net debt level becomes extremely low. Treasury projections in the fiscal update December 2017 show net debt including the fund actually disappears by 2022! Time to stop the fiscal panic please.

MSD are prepared to pontificate in court for days about how married couples have greater economies of scale than two singles living together and how society expects partners to support each other. The 21st century has passed them by.

Why do we concede power and deference to these unelected officials? Is it time to give up on the courts?

National just doesn’t get it. Bill English’s persistence with the accusation that Labour had an $11.7 billion fiscal hole in its figures was, by far, his biggest mistake as Simon Wilson in the NZ Herald says. But did they learn? Even in the face of clear political damage they kept digging.